Fintech expert Leda Glyptis, a true Sibos Insider, is resident blogger for Sibos 2022, offering her unique take on the event. This blog is part of a series - look out for daily updates throughout Sibos week.</em></p> I will confess that, when I first came across Chris Hadfield’s book ‘An Astronaut’s Guide To Life On Earth’, I bought it because I loved the title. Not because I expected it to be fascinating and moving and engaging and thought-provoking to the extent that it was.</p> I love being wrong like that.</p> So when I heard that the opening gambit of this year’s SWIFT Innotribe programme at Sibos is Dutch astronaut André Kuipers, I was more than a little excited.</p> Because… space.</p> But also because… perspective.</p> Because an astronaut has bigger things to worry about than any of us and that’s a sobering thought, in an industry where we often feel like we have the biggest problems and the heaviest of responsibilities.</p> An astronaut’s daring makes our cultural shift foibles seem like child’s play. The scale of their engineering commitment makes our digital transformation KPIs look like a craft stand at the village fair. And yet the point is not to humble us but to inspire us.</p> Inspire us to be more daring and more aspirational and more sweeping in our vision.</p> To be more exacting in our expectations.</p> To think about the immensity of the mission, the precision of the task and the need for re-entry… all at once.</p> And let’s face it. We need all the help we can get.</p> We are not very good at doing complicated things simultaneously.</p> We are good at thinking about uplifting our existing payments infrastructure. Working out it will take this number of months and this amount of money and humans.</p> And we are good at thinking about new technology and working out where to deploy it and how long it will take and how much money we will need to get it done.</p> And we are getting better at thinking about engaging with things as they form and working out what we need to do, when.</p> What we are not so very good at, is this whole thing of doing it all at once… dedicating the same</em> set of months and years to the work of all of those things at the same time, and working out how to deploy the humans and pay the bills from one pot of cash and one body of talent.</p> That bit has always been hard and it hasn’t gotten easier. Or we haven’t gotten better at it. Either way, the world within which we need to do all the thinking, building and evolving, is shifting rapidly, making the things we are not so good at mission-critical.</p> Every year at Sibos we discuss the future of money.</p> It’s a flagship panel. It’s a riveting conversation. Year in, year out… it is a riveting conversation because it keeps moving forward. Because unlike many other industry events, we don’t roll out the hits. We force ourselves to challenge each other and move the conversation forward.</p> I should know: I’ve been a part of this conversation several times and we always put ourselves on the spot. The things we do well as an industry are never as critical as the things we don’t do so well. The things we understand never get as much focus as the things we don’t. This is not an opportunity for self-congratulation: this is Sibos. Our industry’s thinking space. And the future of money conversation is where we get to ask ourselves: has the mission changed?</p> In the midst of a digitisation exercise well into its second decade, in the context of a fully digital economy, on the aftermath of a devastating pandemic, on the eve of a period of profound disruption to the lives of everyday people the likes of which we have never seen before, what is the role of finance?</p> What are we here to do, to assist, to prevent, to nurture?</p> With ownership models shifting. With engagement models shifting. What is it we should be doing next?</p> You will have two</em> opportunities to engage in this conversation. Once with the tribal gathering and once with our panel debate. But the reality is, you will have every</em> opportunity to engage in this conversation. Because what is this whole week for other than to get us thinking about what we need to do, by when and who with.</p> It’s often big and scary work and it’s easy to lose sight of what we all do it for.</p> But as sure as an astronaut needs their guide to life on earth because, ultimately, the whole point of exploration is to come back home to earth and share the wonder and the learnings. So, with our complicated new liquidity management systems and CBDCs and real-time payments infrastructure… ultimately, it all circles back to touching the lives of people we often don’t see, people we rarely speak to perhaps. Ultimately the very people we are here to serve.</p> The future of money is about technology and regulation and complexity galore, sure. But it is fundamentally about life on this here earth and the things we</em> need to do better.</p> Join the ‘Future of Money: Tribal gathering</a>’ on the Innotribe stage at 12:30 CET, 10 October and ‘Future of Money: The panel</a>’ at 14:30 CET on 11 October. </em></p>